Just what is the issue of a fellow writing generously long posts that explain many things and deal with many angles of the topic?

How is that an argument Humphreys.

But you don’t HAVE any arguments do you Humphreys?

No thats right you don’t.

Consider every single implied premise behind the proposal. It is implied that you need to get a new tax in order to get rid of the income tax. Thats putting forward the idea that the bureaucracies are sacrosanct. Which is a disgusting and anti-libertarian idea.

You mean to say that with all the thieving going on you think you can justify policy on the basis of theft-level-neutrality?

The idea of justifying policy on the basis of theft-level neutrality is wrong, stupid and bad. New policy must be theft-level-negative.

But you go even further!!! You actually affect to claim theft-level-stability as a JUSTIFICATION.

Easy to see who worked in blood-sucker-central. Thats an unbelievably pro-thieving treasury dogma. Now I’ve brought this up before so you had absolutely no excuse to overlook this point.

New taxes ought always be introduced, if at all, on the basis of heavily-negative theft-level reform.

Now its a bad thing to be pushing revenue-neutrality since it implies that bureaucracies cannot be closed down. We could close down 100 tommorrow, give the former thieves tax exemptions in lieu of redundancy pay, and we could have double-digit GDR growth going virtually immediately.

Thats a GOOD thing. So to be advocating something which implies, however subtly, that it cannot be done. THATS A BAD THING.

Rather we ought to be pushing that hundreds of these government bureaucracies ought to be closed.

So there is an attempt here to sidestep the need to advocate the closing of government bureaucracies.

Next bit of policy-making idiocy:

The policy isn’t even put forward to be the best policy available. It doesn’t even attempt to be. Actually its a totally perverse policy. But there was not even an attempt to go for what the advocate thought was the best of all policies.

So the starting premise was that better policy doesn’t matter. THIS IS A HATEFUL AND NIHILISTIC PREMISE. And clearly this premise is indeed implied since you use the idea that its better than the status quo (it isn’t) as a justification. Not that its the best policy you yourself can think of. But only that its a bit better than the status quo (which it isn’t).

So you began to make policy on the basis of a nihilistic premise right from the getgo.

Policy must not just beat the status quo. It must be the best policy you can advocate. The policy mix was thus based on a nihilistic idea right from the start. And that nihilistic premise fundamentally is that BETTER POLICY IS IRRELEVANT.

THE POLICY RUNS COUNTER TO THE BASIC FACTS OF THE ENERGY RESOURCES WE HAVE AVAILABLE.

The policy ran counter to the reality of our energy resources. Practically every new car on the road in 10 years time will be diesel. And more likely in 5 years time.

Your policies were pushing against that basic adaptation that will have to be made. Totally perverse and anti-economic and I went over that during the election when you sprung it on us that time.

The other thing that is implied by the proposed policy mix is that CO2 is bad for the environment. A negative externality. This is a lie. But on the other hand traffic congestion IS a negative externality. So why didn’t you advocate peak-time charging along with a cut in all fuel excises or at the very least diesel?

You see a carbon tax is a Pigouvian tax. But Pigouvian taxes must be placed, unless we are insane lunatics or environmentalists (the same thing as it happens) we would want the tax to fall on negative and not positive externalities.

Surely!!!!!!

But oh no. Your next insane suggestion is that Pigouvian taxes can be placed on postive externalities. That is another evil-stupid implied premise that you are pushing here.

Industrial-CO2 is a positive externality but road congestion might be looked upon as an externality. And if you looked at it that way you would say it was definitely a negative externality. So why wasn’t the proposal for a cut in income tax, a cut in fuel taxes, but an increase in peak-time road charges? If one wanted a Pigouvian tax why not go for one that made sense?

If one bought the “revenue-neutral” argument, as terrible a premise as that is, but if you bought into it why not let the tax fall on a glaring negative externality and not a known positive externality? Thats a Mankiw bait and switch if I ever saw one.

So it fails on the Pigouvian level as well. We see that the policy mix fails on every conceivable level.

Actually its even more nihilistic then I said before. Instead of advocating the best policy, it did not merely only justify itself as being slightly better than the status quo. The bar was dropped lower still. The bar was dropped below the status quo that all it had to be was slightly better than a disastrous proposed policy.

So it was a failure on every imagineable level.

And its a disgrace that you didn’t get this right the first time I brought these things up.

Anyway, why don’t you boys try to answer the question. Not scared are you?

The chicken-turkey and his trusty side-kick yellow-doug. Running away from debate again.

Keep it up. Either we will win this or the other side will and kill many times more people than they did in the DDT-bureaucratisation campaign.

But I still want more doug. I want you to dedicate another 2000 words to answering the question: Which do you prefer — a high fuel tax and no electricity tax… or a low fuel tax and a low electricity tax?

I almost considered correcting all the lies and distortions you wrote but then I remembered that you were far too stupid to understand. It then occured to me that nobody could be as stupid as you were pretending to be. A-ha! Your cover is blown. Clearly you are doing a parody of a stupid senile old man.

It’s a very convincing one, and most people probably accept this “cover story”. But I know better.

Instead, it seems likely that you’re a “leftist” working under deep-cover to try and make right-wing people look more stupid. As if GMB doesn’t do that well enough already.

And in associating yourself with Gerry, you’re clearly trying to discredit him. Now… Gerry has made some mistakes in his day and he’s a bit of a rude arrogant loud-mouth. But he’s not all bad, and often makes some very good points. But now with you (and GMB) in his corner, he simply looks like a fringe weirdo freak. Poor guy.

But now your cover has been blown. We see through your evil ways you deceitful undercover greenie. Leave Gerry alone you sicko. :p